


A Beautiful Fiction

by fadewithfury (foxmoon)



Category: Broadchurch, Secret Diary of a Call Girl (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Coffee Shops, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, F/M, Falling In Love, Romance, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-27
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-12 17:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9082723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxmoon/pseuds/fadewithfury
Summary: Hardy and Hannah wind up in a mysterious café that changes them both forever.





	1. Chapter 1

Hannah ducks her head from the bite of a cold wind. Her hair whips around her face, but her ungloved hands are too frozen to do anything except clench in her pockets. Cars grind the city’s perpetual grit into the wet tarmac as they go by. Shops are turning out their lights, and people huddle as they wait for friends on pub stoops. It’s late. Everything is gray and black, and what isn’t gleams harsh in the street lamps.

She passes a bank of dirty slush pushed aside from the plow. Snow this early, before the new year, doesn’t happen that often. Nor is it ever beautiful like it was at her childhood home. She could use something beautiful right about now. A night with a stranger might do. Or it could make things worse, a coin toss she’s lost too often lately.

She’s not sure where she’s going; she just needs to escape. What are the chances that her father would attend the same absurd fetish party she’d been hired to work last minute? It has to be a set-up, but she can’t prove it yet. Her eyes sting with fresh tears. _God, not again. Get a grip, Han_. She rounds a corner to dodge a group of twenty-something lads heading in her direction, and finds herself in a dark, narrow side street. Normally she’d avoid such things at this hour, but she feels reckless in her despair.

Hannah’s heels echo strangely on the cobblestones of the pre-Victorian street. The buildings make eerie, looming shapes in the darkness, and their old boards groan with each gust of wind. It’s desolate. Lost to time. Only a couple of other people cross her path, and she keeps her gaze downward and her heart closed.

A puddle lights up with a soft golden glow, like someone had turned on switch. She pauses to seek out its source. Up ahead, nestled between the dark rowhouses, is a cozy little café. A burst of color and warmth in the gloom. She drifts across the street straight for it without a second thought.

The snowdrifts outside of the café are pristine white, and the windows are dressed with Christmas lights and a big, festive wreath. People inside smile and chat with one another over mugs of warm tea and hot cocoa. A Christmas tree glimmers in the corner by a large hearth, under its boughs are stacks of presents in gaudy patterns. Christmas had already passed outside, but in there, it’s eternal.

A curious brightness blooms in her chest. She opens the door, a sleigh bell chimes. She’s no longer alone.

//

Hardy pushes his specs up the bridge of his nose, and turns a page of a book he picked off the shelf behind him. He hasn’t read a proper story in a long time, and it feels good to finally indulge in a reality that isn’t his own. He’s sat in a high-backed chair by the fireplace. A mug of still-warm tea sits on the table nearby. The murmur of patrons around him doesn’t irritate him like it normally would. The overbearing Christmas decor almost does–Christmas ended two days ago after all– but he’s too relaxed to worry about it now.

“Pardon, anyone sitting there?” says a voice that does something funny to his insides. He looks up to see a woman with windblown blonde hair, face flushed and nose rosey from the cold outside.

“Errm,” he glances to the chair next to his, where she’s pointing. They’d have to share the little round table between their chairs. He’s been in this corner for hours without anyone to pester him. What if she’s one of those people who likes to strike up conversations with strangers? Then he notices the barely concealed sorrow in her eyes, and his heart warms to her.

“No, it’s all yours.”

She smiles, and leaves her coat on when she sits. It’s a maroon belted peacoat. Her boots are black knee-highs, and her knees are exposed. Overall she appears posh, but not unapproachable. Her gaze roams the café, and he recognises the deductive squint she gives along the way. He finds himself more interested in what she discerns from the people in the room than what happens next in his book. But he returns his attention to it out of necessity when the waitress stops by to ask the woman her order.

It’s a bit odd to be personally waited upon in a café like this. Then again, nothing about this place is ordinary. How did they manage to open in a place as small as Broadchurch without notice? Has he been _that_ miserable?

The waitress produces the woman’s order as if out of thin air, and offers it to her with the nonchalance of one who just does that sort of thing all the time. A frou frou cappuccino concoction with a pile of whipped cream atop it. The woman is taken aback at first. She furrows her brow and stares at the contents of her mug, then takes a sip. The crease between her brows relaxes. She settles back in the chair with a hum. They are once again alone in their little corner of the café.

She looks at him over the rim of her mug. Their eyes meet. Hers are an amber sort of brown, and slightly puffy as if from crying. He can’t look away, and he’s not sure if she can either. It’s not awkward or embarrassing. Instead it’s just… weird. Haunting. Like he’s looking into the eyes of someone in a dream. Someone far away, with universes between them. His chest aches with wanting to know her better.

They break the stare at the same time, and he goes back to his book. He senses her subsequent movements out of the corner of his eye–she’s pulling out her mobile. She frowns and shoves it back in her purse. He did the same earlier after discovering his had run out of battery.

“Must be a dead zone,” he offers.

“Twilight zone, more like it,” she says with a nervous laugh.

He warms to her further and closes the book, letting it rest on the arm of his chair. “Aye. I’ve been here for a few hours and my tea’s still as warm as it was when I got it.”

Now she’s giving him that look she’d given the café moments ago. Curious, penetrating. Sizing him up with a coy smile. He looks down at his lap and tugs at his ear. Somewhere in his brain he hopes she finds him acceptable in whatever manner she’s assessing him.

“Have you been here before?” She sets her mug down on the circle table.

“No. Didn’t know it existed.”

“Yeah. Me too. It’s like a Christmas film. Half expect someone to break out in song.”

As she speaks the words, a fiddler strikes up a joyful reel from a stage across the café. A motley band joins in, and soon practically the entire café leaps to their feet to dance.

Hardy doesn’t join. Even in a place like this, certain strands of his DNA remain firmly intact. He focuses instead on his fireside companion.

“What’s yer name?” he says above the din.

“Hannah. Yours?”

“Hardy. Er–Alec. I hate small talk.”

Hannah keeps her smile. He shifts in the seat so that he can face her better.

“I’m going to take off my coat–don’t laugh.” She begins to work the knot of the belt, but pauses to gauge his reaction.

He pulls a face somewhere between intrigued and worried. “Ehm, okay.”

The coat slides off her shoulders and she lets it settle behind her, scrunched up on the chair. As it turns out, she’s wearing the most offensive Christmas jumper-dress he has ever seen. Every ugly holiday jumper pattern possible converges in one. Shiny strands of green and red garland rope around her figure like a Christmas tree. And are those jingle bells on her breasts? His eyebrows raise. Perhaps she’d been crying because she had to wear such a terrible outfit.

“Not what I expected.”

Hannah giggles and the bells jingle now that they are no longer quieted by the confines of her coat. “I, ah, was a, um, cocktail waitress at an after Christmas party.”

He makes a valiant effort not to let his attention drop to the bells. “Oh, well, that isn’t your fault.”

“…for a group of men who had a Christmas jumper fetish,” she continues.

Hardy wrinkles his nose at that. “That explains the bells.”

She shimmies her shoulders. “Yup.”

“I’d expect parties like that in London, but here?”

Hannah quirks a brow. “Here?”

“Never mind. The less I know the better.”

She gives an airy laugh. “You can find just about anything anywhere if you know how to look.”

The ice thoroughly broken, they settle into an easy conversation that meanders through their interests and dips through a few philosophical musings. They don’t ever discuss their personal histories, at least not in so much detail. Something about this place coaxes them to keep things somewhat abstract. She reveals she’s an erotica writer called Belle de Jour, and he tells her he’s a detective inspector working a case in Broadchurch. They both have a headstrong work ethic. They’ve both experienced significant hardships. They are both exhausted by and yet perpetuate their own loneliness.

When their conversation lapses into silence, it’s just as enjoyable. The fire crackles beside them. A solitary harp plays Silent Night over relaxed conversations. Hannah acquires two mugs of hot buttered spiced rum, which they sip slowly to let the fuzzy warmth unravel in their veins.

It’s a dream, Hardy keeps telling himself. But he never awakens. He surprises himself by being the first to rekindle their conversation. They both sit forward in their seats and don’t move when their knees touch. He’s long forgotten about the jingle bells, favouring the spark in her eyes and the way her voice makes his skin tingle.

She looks over his shoulder a couple of times as they converse. When she seems preoccupied with the last few sips of her buttered rum, he looks toward what might have distracted her. There, by the end of the counter, are stairs leading up, and he notices with a lurch of incredulity this place is also an inn. He looks back to Hannah. He doesn’t want to jump to conclusions, and he’s not entirely sure he wants to indulge in a one-night-stand. She’s far more captivating than that. He smooths his tie and sits forward again.

“If we both agree that we probably wouldn’t come back to this place, erm,” he swallows the knot in his throat, “where might I, ehm…see you again?”

She leans in and places her hand so close to his he swears he can feel the electrostatic energy between them.

“Anywhere you like.”

“Y-yeah?”

She nods and holds his gaze. He feels her thumb slide over his knuckle, making his heart ramp up faster than might be good for him in his…situation. (It’s not a condition).

Each of his nervous habits takes a turn. He smooths his tie again. Adjusts his glasses. Looks down at his watch. _Ten hours!?_ He reels, withdraws his hand from her touch as he jolts to his feet.

The mood of the entire café changes in that instant, like a spell breaking before his very eyes.

What had been golden and warm is now dull and dissonant. The garishness of the decour, the noisy chatter, it all pierces his brain and he has to go. He has to go _now_. But– Hannah. He looks at her helplessly

Worry and confusion fill her eyes - just seconds ago there had been fondness. _For him!_ She stands slowly. “Is something–”

“I’m sorry. I have to go. Didn’t mean to be here so bloody long.”

She looks away in hurt. “Right. Laters then.”

“No - I,” he steps closer to her. His hands clench, how he wants to touch– “I’ve been here so long I missed something important. Lost track of time or, I don’t know. But you–this–it was–” he sighs, exasperated with himself. “I’m glad I met you. Can I see you again? Please?”

A little bit of a smile returns to her eyes. “I’d love that.”

He pats his pockets, then offers her his DI card. Of all things. “I feel daft giving this to you, a bloody business card… But it’s the best way to reach me. Don’t worry, you’re not a suspect.”

Hannah laughs, and takes it. Their fingers brush, and it’s the most cliche moment in the history of the universe, but Hardy doesn’t want it to ever end. If she could just keep touching him, maybe whatever spell he undid by checking the time will mend itself.

She tugs him closer, kisses his cheek. The bells jingle with her movements, and they both laugh. He leaves so happy, so impatient for her to ring him that he might burst. The feel of her lips and the smell of her hair lingers long after she’s gone.

//

Hannah watches him leave. To admire the view, of course, but also because she can’t look away from him if she tried. She presses her hand on her chest as he reaches for the door.

A waitress reappears before her, blocking her view of him entirely.

“Would you like someone else?” the waitress says.

“Huh?”

“Would you like something else?”

Hannah shakes her head, perturbed and baffled. She shrugs a shoulder. “No thanks.”

The waitress leaves. Hardy has gone. Hannah pulls her coat back around her shoulders, and looks over to where he’d been sitting. His mug of tea and the book are gone - like he hadn’t ever been there at all. She slides her thumb over the embossed black print of his business card, over his name (written in his handwriting), title, and department. Over the official seal and the phone number (also written in). Either the department handed out generic cards to the officers, or he’d been hired for a special case. Broadchurch, was it?

When Hannah finally makes her way to the exit, she doesn’t look back. She stands outside, bewildered by the presence of broad daylight. Her mobile vibrates in her pocket, and as she reaches for it, a mighty gust of wind snatches Hardy’s business card right out of her hand.

She gives chase. It whips to and fro, high on a current, then she loses sight of it in the blinding sun. Her heart shatters, and she turns to head home in hopes he can be found online somehow.

He cannot. Nor does this place - Broadchurch - even seem to exist. There’s no Wessex Police Department, no Detective Inspector Alec Hardy at all.

//

Hardy discovers the same when he returns to his hotel room. The books she said she had written - nowhere to be found. No Hannah Baxter ever lived in Broadchurch. In his desperation to prove she has to at least exist, he goes so far as to search for recent Christmas jumper fetish parties. Anywhere. The term doesn’t even bring up results in an internet query.

He returns to the café to find it gone, and in its place, a flat stone wall. He rests his hand on the rough surface, and then leaves. What else is he going to do?

Several days later, he returns. Still a wall, still no café.

“Are you looking for the Caravan Café?” inquires an elderly voice over his shoulder.

He turns, guarded. An old woman stands there with a faraway look in her eyes.

“The what?”

“Caravan Café, laddie. Why else would you be here?”

Hardy shuffles his feet and gave the wall a reproachful scowl. “There’s no such place.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I…”

She sniffs and stares at the wall with him. “It’ll come back if you want it to.”

“With respect, madam, cafés don’t just appear and disappear. It was a dream. I haven’t been sleeping well, stress, all of that rubbish.” The lie he repeats to himself. Yet he can still smell her hair and hear her voice. The stupid bloody jingle bells on her breasts still make him laugh out of the blue in his office.

“Sometimes soulmates wind up in different towns. Sometimes different countries,” the old woman says, and he swears there are tears in her eyes. “The Caravan Café helps those of us who have soulmates in different universes.”

Hardy scoffs and rolls his eyes. He’ll believe in magical cafés long before he’ll believe in bloody soulmates.

The old woman sighs. “I saw the both of you over by the fireplace. That’s where all of us find each other at first. I’ve been meeting my love there for sixty years and I’ll never forget what it felt like for those first hours upon hours to slip by unnoticed.”

His chest tightens at the memory, at the very real memory. “Her name was Hannah.”

Another universe. Explained why he couldn’t find a trace of her here - so could lies and dreams, but part of him needed a beautiful fiction more than anything else in the world.

  
_To be continued…_


	2. Chapter 2

Hardy finds that the café will not appear with wish power alone. After his encounter with the enigmatic old woman, he tries to retrace his steps to set up the exact order of events that led him to the café in the first place. He even bloody meditates, but nothing works. Nights are spent wide awake in wonder and disbelief over the whole thing. His soulmate _would_ be in another universe, and that universe would be cheeky about it. So, what’s the trick? Maybe it doesn’t happen because she doesn’t feel the same. Maybe it never happened at all. He had a stroke. Why not—everything else in his body has fallen apart. Is it any less plausible?

Gradually, as the days pass, his mind turns to other things. Work. Getting better. The very real people around him. He never forgets Hannah, but he grows accustomed to her absence. It’s not like they knew each other very long. Ten hours, allegedly. Though only fifteen minutes had passed once he stepped outside. Either way not long enough to truly _know_ someone, if such a thing is even possible.

_People are unknowable._

He fell in love with a ghost that day, or the opposite of one. A hollow shape in the world that only exists because he alone knows she doesn’t.

Time passes like water around him, eroding youth and hope on its path to the sea. The trial is now over. Both cases are resolved, but things never go the way he thinks they should if there’s such a thing as justice. He’s set to leave Broadchurch, when something stops him. The sunset’s reflection flares across the boot of the taxi, and it’s brighter there than it is on the actual horizon. He tells the driver to make one small stop on the way out of town.

He doesn’t expect the café to be there. It hasn’t been for months, but the wooden sign sways over the entrance as though it never went away. _Caravan Café_ it reads in a flourish of gold on a field of green. He unclasps his watch and leaves it on the seat.

“Wait around the corner, please,” he says, rubbing his naked wrist. “Keep the meter running.”

The wreath and other holiday trappings are gone, replaced by clinging ivy and window boxes that overflow with flowers. An a-frame sign stands by the door to entice passers by with the specials of the day. Lavender scones with lemon cream drizzle. Chocolate ganache-filled pastries topped with edible flowers. He stops reading at that point. None of that matters to him in comparison to who sits inside beyond the glass.

///

Hannah sits in a window booth with an armada of desserts on the table before her. One of each from the menu. If this place is as magical as it appears to be, then none of it will go to her hips. It also gives her something to do while she waits for the handsome copper from Brigadoon to arrive.  

God, what a night that was. Her search for answers took her in all manner of directions. She read books about lost cities, mysterious places that appear once every hundred years, lands of eternal youth that lay beyond the veil. Seems people have always needed this sort of fantasy. The world is hard with sharp, seething edges. It takes more than it gives. There has to be a better place somewhere out there.

Many men have sought her out as their ‘better place’ over the years. Her body - their Tír na nÓg, her attention - their Shangri-La, and her touch their Avalon. She let them in willingly, it was what she did best. But the night she met Alec it all fell apart, and she hasn’t taken a client since. Not only did her father discover her career in the most mortifying way imaginable, but it _had_ been intentional. In her loneliness, she befriended another escort with an ulterior motive.

 _Don’t think about that, Hannah. You’re in paradise._ She smiles to herself and peels the wrapper from a cupcake that looks like it belongs in a museum it’s so fucking beautiful. Her mouth can’t possibly open wide enough to accommodate the swirls of blush pink buttercream and pearlescent hand-crafted fondant flowers. But she gives it her best shot and—

The bell chimes over the door. She freezes. Seconds of silence go on like eons, then his footsteps approach.

“Hannah.”

Her eyes flutter shut at the disbelief in his voice. She looks up at him over the cupcake, but her mouth is too full to speak.

“I didn’t think…” He leaves the rest unsaid and just stares at her.

Which is just as well, because she stares right back at him. She slowly chews the cupcake and it’s so, so delicious she can’t help but slump in bliss.

“Hello, Alec,” she says when every crumb of that bite had been savoured.

His stance remains stoic, his features unreadable. At last he clears his throat.

“Can I—” He assesses her array of desserts. “Ehm, is the seat free?”

“What—oh, yeah, saved it for you.”

“Those are all for you, then?”

“Uh, I mean—technically. But now that you're here I'll spare a bite. Fancy a flower petal?”

His expression softens as he sits across from her. “No thanks. They’re not the same if I can’t enjoy it on top of a toadstool.”

She laughs at the image in her head. “I’m sure they can arrange that for you.”

That gets no reaction. Not even a twitch at the corner of his mouth. Her stomach sinks - how she hates not being able to read someone. Talking to him had been so fluid before, so mesmerizing. She gives the nearby bottle of unopened sparkling wine a forlorn look as it sinks into the melting ice water.

“I don’t understand any of this,” he says, startling her. “Do you?”

Her eyes settle on his, and at last she can see something vulnerable and delicate beyond the cage. “No.”

“You don’t exist where I’m from. Hell, this whole bloody place disappeared without a trace once I left. Then I was informed by little red riding hood’s gran that you’re my soulmate, and God or whoever misplaced you in another universe.”

Hannah fidgets with a strand of her hair as she gathers how to reply.

“Sorry, I’m just confused and I hate feeling confused,” he adds.

“Me too.” She sits forward, notes the dimple in his clenched jaw. She looks down at his hand. It’s curled into a fist on the table. He’s tense, and alleviating tension is something she knows how to do very well. “We’ll figure it out, bit by bit. I'll start with what I do know. I missed you.”

His fingers uncurl. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Your turn.”

“You’ve got a glob of pink on your nose.”

 _Smooth._ She preens and grabs a napkin. “That’s how we flirt where I’m from.”

“It’s working.” He cracks a smile. “Your turn.”

Her heart soars. She pushes away the scones and pies and Victoria sponge cake so there’s space between them for clasped hands. Presumptuous but inevitable.

“I know I was in London when I walked in, but outside looks like a Mediterranean resort.”

He looks to the window, and his brow furrows. “Broadchurch for me, and ehm, a loch in the highlands.”

“Weird.”

“I missed you too, Hannah.”

Her stomach flips and she’s not sure what to say. The romantic swoon of a violin, and soft, happy notes from a piano fill the air with emotions that she can’t put into words. She doesn’t deserve this fairytale, does she?

His eyes roam over her, no part of her gets less attention than another. She inches her hand closer, and this time he covers her hand with his. It doesn’t matter anymore - understanding. Knowing. Well, except for one thing.

“If this is the only place we can meet, then how can we make it happen on purpose?”

“Maybe we can ask someone here,” he suggests.

“I tried. They speak in riddles unless they’re taking your order.”

“No, I mean, the others. It’s a place where soulmates meet, so maybe they’ve figured it out.”

Hannah grins at him and slides her thumb over his. “Is that what we are?”

He shrugs. “I’m willing to find out.”

“Me too.”

///

  
It takes several tries, and a couple of years pass, but they do figure out how to meet on purpose. All they could guess was the time wasn’t right for them, until at long last it was. Then they could feel it, like an invisible thread being tugged by the other to call them home.


End file.
